Analytics Firm AdFin Changes Leadership

AdFin co-founder Jeanne Houweling has moved on from her position as the digital advertising analytics firm's CEO for “personal reasons,” a move confirmed by company co-founder and CTO Milosz Tansky.

Tansky, who’s operating as interim CEO, said Houweling will continue her involvement with AdFin on the advisory board.

“Outside of that we're just as focused on our mission as before,” Tansky said. “We will have some exciting news to share soon but we're not ready to make any announcements yet.”

AdFin’s mission is to provide what Houweling called a “Bloomberg terminal for digital media.” In other words, AdFin provides an analytics platform, and not a marketplace, that both the buy side and sell side can tap to optimize their purchasing or pricing decisions.

The platform is designed to collect analytics from clients’ first-party data and mash it together with data from third-party sources including demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), agency trading desks, exchanges and publishers.

By combining these data sources, AdFin creates an index and licenses it to clients as an analytics tool.

“Everyone from publishers to buyers at the major agencies were saying that they don't have visibility into how dollars are being spent across all the different sales channels and media sources,” Houweling told AdExchanger in January. “As a result, there was a real lack of understanding of being able to know in real time what was performing well and what wasn't.”

She also explained at the time how AdFin has expanded beyond real-time bidded (RTB) inventory on display and mobile, and plans to incorporate video, direct-sold inventory and non-RTB inventory like digital out-of-home advertising. Additionally, AdFin has international aspirations.

“We've already incorporated global data for our multinational customers,” she said. “But what I'm thinking about in terms of going international more fully involves building a platform that has all the elements for a multicountry strategy, where we can put people in-market to more easily develop endemic relationships. That's on the calendar for this year.”

According to Houweling’s LinkedIn profile, she left the company, assumed a role on the advisory board and started her own consulting service, Jeanne Houweling Media & Ad Technology Consulting, all in June.